Right. All right. All right, this is the second show of the Globalbob show. Got through the inaugural broadcast. So listen to it. And you're coming back for round two. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Of course, you can go to global Bob Show calm. I'm on Twitter at Globalbob show. And so without further ado, let's get into today's topic. Today's topic is satellite phones, government restrictions, limitations, grid down. Alright, so a lot of us got our first experience of what is it like to instantly be uprooted from our offices, our desk chairs, and other places and sent home to work. It was a little bit of adjustment, some people liked it, some people didn't. But one thing we quickly found out is is that we just don't have enough bandwidth at our house and some some cases. So we really got people thinking, you know, we went home and we had internet, it could have been slow. Maybe you called your ISP and upgraded and stuff. But what happens with all the Ukraine, Russia stuff that's going on? And what if this cellular network comes under a cyber attack? What if it's, you know, completely cut off, you know, if you cut off communications, you kind of cut off a lot of things. So some of my friends have reached out to me, they know that I'm an amateur radio operator. I'm also in the ISP business. And of course, I'm a outdoorsman, hiker. And so I know a thing or two about communications. And so most of the time, when I get the phone call and listen to what they kind of the where they're going down, I'm like, okay, here comes the satellite phone question. So I've gotten everything from Hey, man, I need to get a couple satellite phones. So me and my wife can communicate, you know, when the cellular networks down, okay? To businessmen saying hey, you know, I mean, I can deal without internet, but I got to be able to get, you know, voice communications, I got to be able to call into conference calls and stuff. So I'm thinking about getting a satellite phone. So of course, what you're fixing to hear in this podcast is kind of the spill that I tell them is, what are the nuances around this. And moreover, something that we are the global Bob Show the crossroad of technology and politics. So there are some political things and some governments that just don't like folks haven't satellite phones. So you got to imagine, back in the early days, they had Morse code. And so countries were communicating back and forth, and possibly spies or whatever dissidents and people trying to cause some unruliness inside of countries. They communicate via force cut Morse code. Of course, it's not encrypted, for all intents and purposes, and so the countries could listen in on it, they could go cut the wire, if it went up by radio frequency, they could jam it right on that frequency. So really, the government they could cut off that communications well, as telephones advanced, and or communications advanced, and we got to telephones. Now we have this thing, where about in the 80s, late 80s? Probably satellite phones, and this really kind of a concern some countries have, which we'll get into a little bit later. But it's like, how do they how do they jam this? Right? I mean, you can jam satellite phones in certain areas, but it's kind of difficult to to jam at a country level really to, to control that or even to monitor. So satellite phones, you know, people say Oh, well, they're, they're secure their satellite phones. Well, we'll, we'll talk about that. But satellite phones are no more or no less secure. And in some cases, I'd probably say they're a little less secure, just in the way they work. And so you know, don't think of satellite phones as being secured. And so now there's a few countries and I'll name them off and you'll probably see a theme here. So we're satellite phones restricted at the restricted and little place called Burma slash Miramar, Chad, China, Cuba. India, Libya, Nigeria, North Korea, Russia and Sudan. Now, not all those countries, but some of them have a couple themes in common. They're about the way they treat their people and about the way they try to control the news and the narrative inside those countries. So, and those countries alone, if you get a satellite phone and you happen to be traveling to one of those, then I would highly recommend that you don't take it with you. Now, there are some countries like Russia, who I've heard, you can file a report with what's equivalent, kind of like to their FCC, and they will give you permission to operate that satellite phone inside their country. So like I say, don't buy satellite phones to ship them to Cuba, don't buy satellite phones to ship them, you know, to Russia, you can put them into the Ukraine, which we'll talk about that as far as some of the security around it. But, you know, for all intents and purposes, if these countries are outlaw in or banning or highly restricted satellite phones, then I would highly recommend you don't buy them and travel with them there or buy them and send them there. So satellite technology, how does it work? Some people may not realize but there's kind of two big camps when it comes to satellites. The first camp or flavor of satellite is what they call a geo sat. And that geo stands for geo synchronous orbit. And so with those satellites, they are hovering right over the equator. And so when you need to connect with them, you get to a clear spot and you know exactly where the satellite is, and your your phone will initiate its connection. Now we've talked about the GEO satellites, which are the geosynchronous ones. The other flavor of satellite is called the Leo satellite. No, it's not named after Leonardo DiCaprio, but the Leo satellite stands for Low Earth orbit. Now what why this is important is for two reasons. One, LEO satellites are not what they call geosynchronous satellites. So with a geosynchronous satellite, I can walk outside with my Inmarsat phone, find a clear shot to the sky. And if there's no weather, and I stay still, I could talk on that for hours, no problem whatsoever. The Leo satellite is like your iridium and your global star phones. The Leo satellite is close to the Earth's atmosphere. And but it's always moving. And so what has to happen is the Leo satellite has to be overhead. And your telephone has to be able to communicate with the satellite. And that satellite has to communicate with a ground station. Some were in proximity. Now there are a couple different ones that do interstellar switching, but it's kind of past this podcast, but just think of it as kind of like in that area. So if I get out my global star phone, and I'm sitting in the Bahamas, and I make a phone call, it's going to hit that Leo satellite, and then the downlink is going to be it's on the west coast of Florida want to say, down in Fort Myers area, or maybe even up a little farther, like in the center and see burns where their ground station is. And so you can see that I'm in the Bahamas, it hits that and goes down. Now as that satellite moves at a state overhead, sometimes for 15 minutes or so. And then as it goes down across the horizon, what if they're working properly, the next satellite is already up, our phone is switched over to it. And the process continues while the call is happening. Now, the LEO satellites have, to me superior voice quality Actually, I'll just go ahead and say they do have superior voice quality. And the reason why I say superior voice quality is is because the Leo satellite is close enough to the Earth's atmosphere that when you go the speed of light. While it's extremely fast, you know that being as far out as the satellites are at the speed of light does make a difference. And so what I find on the global star, you can have a normal phone conversation just like you would kind of on a cell phone. Where would the geosynchronous satellites like the Inmarsat you do get a clear shot of the sky, you can hold that conversation for hours, but to me the the voice sounds a little different. But moreover, there's latency involved, I believe, don't quote me on it, but about 187,000 meters per second speed of light. The geosynchronous satellites are about 27,000 miles up in space. So what happens is that it has to go up to that satellite come back down, right? So the the LEO satellites, the ones that are closer to Earth, they're only maybe 150 miles up or lower. So these are 27,000 miles up so you can see quite a bit of difference. And so whenever I'm talking to people like my wife or other folks while I'm out on my adventure, I talk them on the Inmarsat and they they kind of have gotten used to the to the slight delay, if not, you'll, you know, two people talking each other over each other because you say something, and by the time they hear it, and they've already started talking back, you've already started something else. So on the high level, your Leo's better quality. However, you may not be able to have those long phone calls because sometimes the switchover doesn't work and things like that. Also, too, they don't work at the polls, some of them do but like the global star doesn't, but also the Inmarsat does not so if you're really looking for polar communications, if you guys are up in Antarctica, or down in Antarctica, depending on what you listen to this podcast, then you know, the, the Inmarsat and the global star just probably aren't going to work for you with that really the only name in town is a radium. Now, radium is also a Leo satellite service, but it does something what they call inter stellar switching, which means that one Leo satellite can relay to the next Leo satellite and so on until it can get to a ground station. So the other thing I'll tell you about the two types of satellites is is that it's not necessarily a Leo geo thing, but it's your local number. So on global star, my number I live here in Central Florida, I have an 863 phone number, it's no problem at all. Anybody can call it from a cell phone. It does not cost them any money to call that 863 number. Now my Inmarsat phone, it is a special country code. So we know how many countries there are in the world, but there's also some special country codes. And Inmarsat happens to have one of those. And so a lot of cell phones in the United States, even if you have international calling on they may or may not call a Inmarsat number, because when you call that number, you're also re occurring a charge. And so I get charged and you get charged on your bill. So a lot of cell phone companies just block those out of the box, because probably 99.9% of the people would never call that number. But if you do call them they can open it up, but just know that you will incur a cost. So with the Inmarsat, I don't want people to incur cost and so I have a separate service with that, and I do have a local 863 phone number that if someone calls it, it basically puts it on my bill instead of their bill. But here's the rub. If I call you back, you're going to see on the caller ID, my Inmarsat number, which is a crazy country code and other numbers. And so some things I find myself doing if I'm trying to have no other way of communicating. I need to call somebody I haven't really called them before from the Inmarsat, so they don't know about the to number system. What I'll do is I'll call them, they won't answer the phone, usually because they think it's a spam call. And I will leave them a voicemail and say, Hey, I'm calling from my Inmarsat phone, I'm going to call you back in exactly 10 minutes. However, if you'd like to call me back sooner, and then I'll tell them my other phone number, that 863 number. So that seems to work out pretty good. But it's like if you're trying to get a hold of somebody, it can make it kind of difficult. So that's the big camp with Leos. And God, why do certain governments not like satellite communications? Well, you can see just from what we've talked about, that with satellite communications, you're hitting a satellite and then going down usually into another country because if you're operating one in, say, Cuba or Russia, chances are they don't have a ground station there. But so that's why they don't like it right? So you can get on this phone and you can have a conversation with any news outlet or whatever. And there's really nothing they can do about it. Now they can try to triangulate you and stuff but you know for all in intent and purposes, it becomes very hard. Also, you got to remember that these satellite phones and and satellite devices because of the latency, they do what they call arranging. And so when they're arranging, they're basically looking at GPS coordinates and figure out you know, how they can adjust their timing and stuff. So what you got to be careful of just like I mentioned with the soleus, in the back geo chords, and also the Inmarsat doing, its ranging to establish a phone conversation, those countries can get those core those geo chords out of the signal. And so what they will do is, say, if they have some way of intercepting, it's not usually the uplink. And we can talk more about why the uplink is harder to to intercept. But usually it's the downlink. And so when they intercept those GPS coordinates, though, we'll know exactly where you're at on the roof of a building or out in the open. And that's another thing too, you know, unless you put an external antenna, you got to use these things out in the open. Now the zone Leo and the little Tex communicators that I mentioned, now, they're pretty, you know, inconspicuous, I can clip one to my backpack, I can wear one like a pager. There's also some special clothing that's RF transparent, you know, like backpacks that allow the signal to get through. And so if I'm texting on my iPhone, chances are that government's not going to know that I'm using a satellite communicator. Now with a satellite phone. If you haven't seen one, you can Google them. Either the Inmarsat I set phone to, or you can look at the global star GSP 1700. Both of those have a, an antenna on there, that's about a foot long, maybe not quite a foot eight inches long, big thick, they don't look like anything we've ever seen before. Well, actually, we have seen them before, it was just back in the 90s. But you know, they're kind of clunky and things like that. So if you're going to use a satellite device and a country, even if the country is not on this list, I would still try to keep it on the download. So I have a Bluetooth connectivity on my Inmarsat, which makes it really nice because I can connect up to it with Bluetooth. and I can kind of walk around and leave the phone sitting out there on the, you know, out on the veranda. And so it's a little less inconspicuous. But if you put that thing up to your ear, every I guarantee you everybody's going to be looking at you. So don't think that one, you're not going to stick out like a sore thumb and two, they can track. Alright, so you're not traveling to one of the countries that heavily regulate or outright ban satellite communications, which include the two way messengers, trackers, and also the voice, the Inmarsat and the global star. So, now you're finally here, and you say, I got to have some satellite phones. So when the grid goes down, I can still communicate, even if it's with other people with satellite phones. Alright, so that's a lot to unpack. So in simple terms, will the satellite phone work if the grid is completely down? And I'm going to say, I'm going to go out on a limb here? I hope I have not get rid of any sponsors. Not that I have any. But the answer to that is probably 99% chance it will work. Now, there's a couple of reasons why. One is is that even to people with satellite phones, say you're on one side of the United States, as in the case with the global star, if I'm down in the Bahamas, and you're out in California, my phone is going to communicate with the Leo satellite above is going to come down in Florida somewhere and then it's going to hit probably the internet, or some kind of public switched telephone network to establish that call out to California, of which it's going to go to a ground station up to a satellite to your satellite phone. So if the greatest completely down, the satellites probably won't even be able to get that call across the internet because they're still using part of the internet to do that. And so that's on the Leo phones. Now, on the geo phones, you probably stand a little better chance of actually getting something through. If you look at Inmarsat, they have I believe three geosynchronous satellites that cover the complete Earth. And if I'm in the Bahamas, and you're in Let's say Washington state, and we're both on the same satellite, it may actually work because it would call from satellite phone, the satellite phone and stay on the satellite, that it's servicing each one. So it may work. But however, have would probably contend that it still will not work. Because you gotta think if the internet's completely down, then there's other servers that are running that are helping to complete this call, and they may not be in the downlink station, right. It could be up in the cloud or something like that. So will it work? Most likely? I would say no. So with that, I would say that there's a other technology that you could evaluate, to really do that communications, if the grids down. And now that I stop and think about it, it is if really, the global Internet is down? Do we really care about making business calls at that point, I mean, I don't think the Ukrainian folks are quite concerned about, you know, normal business activities. And so probably really, what you're looking for is to be able to talk to your friends, locally, your family locally, and do some coordination. So I want to present you with an alternative technology, it has been around for quite some time, I probably gave it away, that I am an amateur radio operator. And so I would highly recommend if you're really concerned about it, there are some options that don't require you to take a test and get a license, you're still required to get a license. And that's called the GMR S system. Or as some amateur radio operators call it the bubble pirates. And so what they call the bubble pirates is that you go down to say, your sporting goods store, they get some of these camouflage radios that say they talk for 25 miles and they're in a you know, a little bubble plastic thing, you pop it open, charge them up and away you go. If you do that, that's technically illegal, because the FCC requires you to get a GMRS license. And it's just a fee that you pay, and it covers you and your immediate family. But with those, you're only going to be able to talk in a limited distance. Yes, that 25 mile range is probably between two mountain peaks on a non humid day. And so, you know, I haven't seen at least in Florida, anybody get anywhere near that range. But however, you can get an amateur radio license. Amateur Radio, whenever I say that, or ham radio. I know what you guys think those guys that drive those minivans with all these antennas all over it and stuff like that. And, you know, gotta got a radio mic up to their phone to their face? Well, no, actually, I drive a leaf with a couple antennas on it. But you can get a technician license you, your wife, your family. And that technician license is really opens up I would say, Man, some people may argue with me on this, but I would say it opens up about 75% of amateur radio activity. And so if you get your license, it's extremely easy. And now that COVID hit, you can actually get your license online, they set it up to where you can take it online, but if not, I went down to my local church and took it and it's not very expensive, and you can use higher wattage radios. But more over here where I live out in Central Florida. We have a county wide network that's ran by our emergency operations center EOC and they cover all of Polk County with repeaters and so I have a little handheld radio that I could walk outside and I can talk to whoever I want around, you know around Polk County and a little bit outside of Polk County and all that's with a technician license. Now Florida has a really super robust system, where we actually have a repeater system that stretches from Key West Florida and it goes up both coasts, the West Coast and the East Coast and then converge back in Tallahassee Panama and it's called the SAR net. Now the SAR net is just like the Polk EOC network and it will allow you to talk statewide we're just a two way radio. So if the grids down and you really want to maintain communications back with your your home, or friends and family that live for me anywhere in Florida, essentially I can do that. Now. I explained what the satellites having to use the Internet to connect up and stuff like that the ones in Florida they don't use the internet. The SAR net is all microwave and repeat So that means the internet could be 100% down. And I could travel about the state of Florida and still talk to my wife, I could talk to, you know, the Emergency Operations Center, I can hear, you know, we're floods are and unrest. And so if you're looking for that grid down communications, and you're looking for it for safety, and to be able to communicate with your family and friends and organize, then I believe that the technician license is far cheaper, because all you have to do is get your license and with a, you know, a radio less than$100, then you can talk around the state. One thing to remember is that amateur radio cannot be used to conduct business activity. And so you can't have a conversation with your body that's in a different city in Florida and talk about, you know, scheduling service to come, you know, redo some pipes or whatever, that's totally against the rules. And so you got to remember that, but it's perfectly fine for me to relate to my wife through amateur radio that I'm down at the market, and they happen to have, you know, some ice and does she need me to get more ice and gas, that's perfectly fine. But you cannot use amateur radio to Doctor transact business. It's supposed to be used just for, you know, emergency communications and having general conversations. Now, ham radio has been around for quite some time. And there's a lot of countries that do restrict some of the ham radio operations. But for all intents and purposes, I have not talked to a country yet. And had any kind of conversation where the operator was saying, hey, that's against my country's rules, right? I mean, we talk about what's going on in those countries and the news back here, now, you know, when the presidential election was going on, they were pretty interested in that. And so, you know, just be mindful that if you do go down the amateur radio path to establish your communications, then you need to make sure that your conversations are the ones that comply with the FCC rules now, on your satellite systems, it doesn't matter. You can transact business and do whatever. So when you're looking for that, that technology or that application, that's going to allow you to communicate in when you're using non traditional methods, which is pretty much a cell phone, then just think about the ramifications of using that technology, whether it's being geo located where people could locate you, when no problem or choosing another technology to where everybody can hear you. And thus, you know, it's only used for emergency purposes and things like that. So, really, I think they all have their merits and their place. And if it were me, I would get the ZX OLIO communicator, I would get the Inmarsat satellite phone, and then I would get your basic technician license. And who knows, maybe in the next podcast, we'll talk everything about ham radio, and just how easy it is for me at my home to communicate with just a radio and an antenna plugged into the cigarette lighter on my truck with somebody as far away as Kuwait. And yes, I have done that out in the middle of my pasture one time, but we'll save that for another podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in to the second show. I hope to have these out every week. I hope my presentations get better. And if you have any questions you'd like for me to cover on the show, you can go to global Bob show.com Send me an email Globalbob show@gmail.com or you can find me out on Twitter at Globalbob show. Thank you so much for joining. Have a great day. And I'll see you next week for the next installment of the global Bob Show.